


Strangers in the Street

by crinklefries



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: 1930s, 1940s, 1940s Bucky Barnes, 1950s, A love letter to NYC summer nights, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional, Hopeful Ending, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Melancholy, Mild Sexual Content, Nomad Steve Rogers, Period-Typical Homophobia, Pining, Post-War, Pre-War, Strangers to Lovers, True Love, World War II, some off-screen time traveling, the Author will not be explaining the logistics of this fic at this time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-03 20:13:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,304
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24931345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinklefries/pseuds/crinklefries
Summary: Bucky is eighteen, not stupid, so he shakes his head.“No thanks, fella,” he says.“I didn’t know you smoked,” the man says.It’s such a funny thing to say that Bucky pauses, frowning. In between his fingers is the thin white cylinder, its ends neatly trimmed.“You don’t know me,” he says.“Maybe,” the man says. His voice is deep in a way that Bucky can’t catch, but can swallow. It rattles into him, a tenor so low it makes his jaw ache, warms him in the chilled night air. “I thought I did, once.”*(Every five years, Bucky meets the same tall, blond stranger.)
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 91
Kudos: 730
Collections: Sweet and Gentle Steve/Bucky





	Strangers in the Street

**Author's Note:**

> I was listening to _Strangers in the Street_ by the Fratellis and this fic fell into my head. It's soft and it's sad and maybe a little too emotional, but that's where we're at! 
> 
> I love this story and hope you will too. ♥

*

**1935\. (18 years)**

He’s eighteen years old the first time he sees him.

Palms rough with callouses, his forehead slick with sweat; he has tracks of dirt streaking the back of his neck and dried blood caked under nails he hasn’t trimmed in weeks. There’s a gash across his left palm and a dirtied rag wrapped around his hand. It’s a quick fix with little reward; the bleeding staunches, but the rope burn remains. He’s skin and bones and the lean, hard-won muscles of someone who’s been working with his body since he was a child.

Maybe that was just last year then, or the year before. Time used to mean something, but that was before it had stopped really meaning anything. That was then, and this is now; which is to say, he had been a child before and then his father had died, and then he had been a child no longer. That’s fine, because he likes working with his hands anyway. He’s good at it. He’s good at it, but he’s tired. There’s a difference in there, somewhere.

There’s the breath of a warm breeze that stirs his hair; brown curls that are matted to the sides of his head, grown longer in the time since his Ma took a pair of shears to try and even it all out.

He unscrews the top of his glass bottle of water and tips it all the way back. He swallows it neatly, the lukewarm water sliding against the back of his throat and reviving him, all the way down. He finishes it and puts it in the crate with all of the other empty bottles, unwraps his hand, and presses the back of it to his forehead.

Someone takes the time to say goodbye to him and he smiles. He raises a hand, touches it to his temple, and steps away from the water.

His once-white shirt, browned with grime, sticks to his back. Bucky runs a hand through his dirty hair and is thankful for the breeze.

  
A mouth on his, a hand quickly scrabbling against the bare skin of his flat stomach. Heat pools underneath, a gnawing hunger as he sucks in a sharp breath. His shirt is rucked up and the hard, firm lines of the other man press against him, a length pressed against his thigh, the unbearable warmth of two bodies trying to be discreet because walls are paper-thin and a young man leaving another man’s apartment in the middle of the night won’t go unnoticed.

He pants into the other man’s mouth—he can’t remember the name now—a Mark or a Robert or a William—another night, another name—just someone he picked up at the place he goes to when the hunger becomes too sharp, a place with no name and no address—if it’s unmarked and unacknowledged then it can’t be turned out—and the man groans, his fingers scrabbling lower until Bucky pulls back and aggressively undoes his belt and buckle and slides down the zipper to let the man slip his hand in and over him. A rough palm with rough calluses fists over him and Bucky lets out a hiss that’s also like a breath that’s been punched out of him.

It’s not romantic—it never is—but Bucky is eighteen going on forty years old, so what does he care for romance? He just wants a few minutes to not think about his mother or his sisters or the bills he barely makes enough to cover or the dames he takes out during the afternoon and their guys he eyes when it’s too dark to notice.

A guy like—Thomas or Gary or Charlie—does the trick when he gets like this. It’s quick and it’s a little dirty, but it’s satisfying enough or, at least, it gets the job done. Sometimes it’s a hand and other times it’s a mouth. Rarely is it more than that, but that’s a personal choice. There’s only so stupid an eighteen year old can be. The guy twists his hand and Bucky bites down into his cloth-covered shoulder. It’s with a few more strokes and a hot puff of breath that Bucky spills over the other man’s hand.

The turnaround is just as easy, just as quick.

They kiss again, but only because it seems like they should and then Bucky’s tucking himself back in, slinging his suspenders back over his shoulders, and unrucking curls that have been tugged askew.

The other man—Harold or Benjamin or Andrew—gives him a half smile and Bucky touches his fingers to his temple again. He closes the door behind him and, his blood racing and his skin flushed warm against the chill of the night, plans to never see him again.

  
He’s halfway down the street in Lower Manhattan, walking toward the train to take him back to the ramshackle two-and-a-half bedroom apartment he shares with his whole family, and fumbling inside his pocket for a cigarette when he sees a large shadow under the flickering street lamp.

He slows his movements, cigarette finally in hand, but the shadow—a man—does not move. Bucky takes one step and then another and there’s a distant call in the back of his mind to be careful—a hazy little reminder that says he’s stepping out of another man’s apartment and he’s pink and loose and smells like sweat and sex—which he ignores because the light flickers and catches. The shadow—the man—is twice the size of him, broad in shoulders, and even larger in chest, with hair the color of dark honey and streaks of amber, that’s been brushed back, and light-colored eyes that Bucky can see glow under the artificial light.

He has on a large leather jacket pulled over a thin shirt that isn’t appropriate—for the weather or for public company. His hands are in his pockets and he stands square and broad, with his feet planted firmly on the ground and shoulders that are rigid, although there’s a slump to him that Bucky can’t place. It’s not a shape, but the air of him; as though he is holding himself straight only to keep from collapsing into his center.

He doesn’t move and Bucky, sucking in a breath, stops his roving, hungry—always hungry—eyes and continues past him.

The sidewalk is large enough for them both, so he is surprised when the man speaks.

“Do you need a light?”

Bucky is eighteen, not stupid, so he shakes his head.

“No thanks, fella,” he says.

“I didn’t know you smoked,” the man says.

It’s such a funny thing to say that Bucky pauses, frowning. In between his fingers is the thin white cylinder, its ends neatly trimmed.

“You don’t know me,” he says.

“Maybe,” the man says. His voice is deep in a way that Bucky can’t catch, but can swallow. It rattles into him, a tenor so low it makes his jaw ache, warms him in the chilled night air. “I thought I did, once.”

Bucky doesn’t know what that means. He’s as discomfited by his own uncertainty as he is curious about why this other man doesn’t seem to be bothered by it.

“I would know,” Bucky says and he’s skimming him again—all—God, he must be six foot if he’s a day—of him and he sucks in his breath through his teeth when he gets back to the top. “If I knew you.”

“That’s usually how that works,” the man says and then, to Bucky’s dismay, he smiles.

No, that’s not entirely right.

It’s less a smile—an outright smile—than it is a softening; the edges of his soft mouth turning up at the corners and his eyes crinkling. He looks, for a moment, as though he has had years lifted from his shoulders and Bucky can see then—yes, he’s older, and Bucky’s couldn’t place how much so, but not so much that he wouldn’t consider it. He’s younger than he looks and he’s older than he appears. That makes Bucky sad, although he couldn’t say why.

“Where would I know you from?” Bucky asks. He doesn’t have nerves of steel—nothing like it—but the man makes no moves one way or the other and Bucky’s just had a long night at the end of a long day, so he gives in to impulse more readily than his Ma or his Dad—rest his soul—had ever taught him to.

“Oh this and that,” the man says. “This time and another time.”

Bucky’s confusion deepens, his brows knit together, and the other man somehow—impossibly—softens further. It’s familiar. Not familiar _to_ Bucky, but _familiar_ ; so easy in how comfortable it is. That makes no sense at all, given their acquaintanceship of just four minutes, but Bucky supposes maybe that’s just the way some people are.

“Okay,” Bucky says. “That time. How did we know each other? Why did we know each other?”

The other man doesn’t answer immediately this time and that gives Bucky time to catalogue him further. He’s not hard, but he’s been hardened, like a stone that’s been softly shaped by the wind and the earth around it. He doesn’t wear it obviously, not really, but Bucky can tell it in another person—the weariness of his brows and the downward slope of his shoulders and the way that there’s a sad tension that never quite leaves his expression.

It’s like looking into a mirror and seeing someone who looks nothing like him.

Bucky wonders who he is—this other man who is just like him.

“We’ve always known each other,” the man says. “We had always known each other.”

“What...does that mean?” Bucky asks.

“It’s hard to explain,” the man says.

“Make me understand,” Bucky answers.

“You know me,” the man says and shifts. It’s like a mountain moving, all rippling lines and the center of gravity being taken away. “Or you will. You did, once. I wish I could explain it better.”

“You don’t seem to be trying very hard,” Bucky mutters and that makes the man laugh, surprisingly. It’s a short laugh, but a deep one—as genuine as it is surprised itself, as though he was not expecting to or, maybe, as though he had forgotten how.

“Okay, that’s fair,” he says. “I’m not sure how the rules work.”

“Of what?” Bucky asks.

The man just smiles.

“You sure you don’t need a light? I don’t have much time, but I’d like to give you a hand, if I can.”

“I got a lighter,” Bucky says.

“Okay,” the man says.

He doesn’t frown, but he seems less bright than he had been a moment before. There’s a soft smudge in Bucky’s chest, something like a light ache. He’s not sure why it’s there, but he thinks it’s because the light has flickered from the other man’s eyes.

“Do me a favor,” the man says.

Bucky doesn’t know the man and he doesn’t owe him anything.

“Okay,” Bucky says anyway.

The man looks at him—and again there it is, that aching, agonizing, inexplicable familiarity.

“Hold onto this for me,” the man says.

Bucky doesn’t know what to expect, but the man steps forward and then he’s there—right there—towering over Bucky, all six-foot-whatever of him and Bucky’s breath catches in his throat because the man is large, but he’s also painfully beautiful and, what’s worse, he’s trembling.

“Are you okay?” Bucky asks, softly, but the man doesn’t answer.

The man takes something up and off his neck and before Bucky can question it, he has a chain and a square-shaped something pressed into the palm of his free hand.

“What—” Bucky says, but the man just shakes his head and takes a step back.

He takes the warmth with him—the height, the width, the gravity. Bucky’s stomach clenches at the loss.

“I’ll come back for it,” he says. “Thank you, Buck.”

He smiles again, but this time it doesn’t crinkle the corners of his eyes. Bucky misses it immensely, a little comfort that’s flickered out completely.

  
Bucky is a few steps past the street lamp when it settles in—when his name sinks into the base of his spine with a panicked, terrible flicker.

“Hey, wait, how did you—” he starts, but when he turns, he’s surprised to find the street empty.

The shadows are where he left them, the street lamps casting a pale, orange-yellow glow onto nothing but dark squares and empty spaces.

  
Bucky sucks in a breath and puts his cigarette away. The chain he keeps curled inside his fingers, cold and safe.

He presses his palm to his heart—one injured thing to the other. He tucks away light eyes and honey-colored hair under an orange glow and slowly crosses the remaining two blocks to the subway.

He waits ten minutes for his train, the minutes counting down in his head pleasantly, a deep voice that creeps into the marrows of his tired bones until he sighs with relief. The train comes, eventually, and he gets on, just him and two other men, tired and worn from too hard work for too little pay, none looking at the other because that’s the last bit of dignity they can find in the late recesses of night. He finds a seat and closes his eyes as the train sways around him.

He’s distracted the rest of the ride home, wondering where strangers come from and where they go when they leave you.

*

_Steven Grant Rogers_ it says.

They’re dog tags and they belong to a man named Steven Grant Rogers.

Bucky doesn’t know who that is and he doesn’t know how to find him again.

He shoves the chain and dog tags into a sock and shoves the sock into the back of his drawer. It stays back there, untouched and unacknowledged, but safe, like a memory that cannot be forgotten or a secret that cannot be looked at by the light of day.

*

**1940\. (23 years)**

Five years pass and Bucky Barnes lives.

He spends three more years mindlessly loading and unloading cargo from ships that find port at New York Harbor. It’s tough, back-breaking work that leaves him with dirt caked over sweat-slick skin and splinters in his palm that he is only partially talented at drawing out. Still, he doesn’t mind. The Depression ends in name, but in reality there’s still mouths to feed and hard enough to find a job that pays enough to feed them.

Working the docks leaves him bone-tired, an older man than he should be at nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, but at twenty-two his luck comes in. He’s grown even taller by then, a lean, well-muscled man falling short of six foot by two scant inches. He has a well-defined, sharp jawline and cheekbones that look carved from marble. His slate blue eyes are bright and his eyebrows dark. His curls fall over the sides of his face, just long enough to be tucked behind his ears, and there’s a smudge of a dimple in his chin.

He’s well-liked by the dames he offers his warm, crooked smile to and even better liked by larger men with rough hands and hungry expressions that track him across certain bars and other, certain places.

He’s also well-liked by his employer, who appreciates his charm and work ethic and takes him into the office one day to tell him he no longer needs him.

Bucky’s face falls, his chest already tight with panic, but Mr. Donnelly gives him a warm smile instead, the kind a father might give his son.

“I have a friend,” he says. “How are you with numbers?”

  
Bucky trades in manual labor for a desk job that he comes to six days a week, with Sundays off to rest on the Lord’s Day. He does a mixture of secretarial and accounting work for two prominent lawyers in Midtown and his employers are as nice as two middle-aged white lawyers can be and the pay is better than anything he’s used to, which is all that really matters.

He likes it just fine, but he starts losing muscle definition, so he signs up for a gym near his home—Goldie’s—and begins boxing. It’s nothing serious, but he has fun and soon he finds out that he’s even pretty good at it. He meets a couple of fellas there who live close by in Brooklyn and they’re good boxing buddies, but they’re even better at drinking, so Bucky starts getting to the office by 8 am so that he can leave by 6 pm, get to the gym by 7 pm, train for two hours, and then go to a bar near the water with his friends three evenings a week. He saves two nights for his Ma and the girls and two nights to find the kinds of things a guy needs when he’s still young enough to want to have some fun.

He settles into this routine for the first half of 1940 and by the time the city grows heavy under the heat of summer, Bucky’s not at all surprised when, one evening, one of the guys—Gabe Jones—slings an arm over Bucky’s shoulder and tells him he and two of his friends have an extra bed for rent, if he’d like to move in.

So Bucky packs what things he has and promises his younger sisters that they can do whatever they like with his room after he leaves. He kisses his Ma on her cheek and clutches a dish of homemade meatloaf and mashed potatoes to his chest as he leaves his childhood home in Red Hook and moves into a small room in a four bedroom apartment in Brooklyn Heights.

  
He’s happy, mostly, in the way that happiness can be a sharp-clawed, visceral feeling—alive and electric—an exhalation in the middle of a summer night—head tipped back, the humid hot air clinging to bare arms and the smooth napes of necks—to a healthy, strong young man with a beautiful smile and a future that is only slightly shadowed by portends of wars of to come. But it’s the summer of 1940 and the spectre of war is a hazy, billowing, nebulous thing; still distant enough that Bucky can lean into Gabe Jones’s arm in a bar in Brooklyn Heights and wish he was someone else.

He’s one person by day and another person by night and it’s not the shine on his shoes or the product in his hair that separates the two, but an ache in his chest that he can’t soothe and a confidence he only wears sometimes and not others. Sometimes, when he’s tired and it’s been Another Night—another set of strange hands, another mouth on his own, brown eyes or green eyes, or light hair that he runs his fingers through and leaves in disarray when he walks back out the door—he crawls across his small bed in his small room in Brooklyn Heights and reaches into the back of the small, wooden chest pressed against the wall.

He doesn’t remember strong arms or a barrel-chest or honey-colored hair, but he does remember light eyes crinkled in the corners and dog tags pressed to his fingers and on nights like this—his chest sad, his bones sad—he unfolds a pair of socks that he’s kept for five years, just to protect the treasure inside.

He runs his fingers over an engraved name and numbers that make no sense to him and lifts the chain over his head. It nestles against the hollow of his chest and he presses a hand against it, holding it close to his heart, as though he can carve it into his skin, a memory and a mystery, and a name he’s never heard since.

On nights like this, Bucky turns onto his side, a hollow ache gnawing at his gut. He curls his fingers into a stranger’s chain and, watching the moon through his Brooklyn window, gently falls asleep.

  
Two days a week, Bucky goes dancing. It’s not just because it’s expected of him. Bucky’s good at dancing. His body is young and it’s strong, made for pulling someone close and unraveling them from the center of his chest and curling them back in again. He loves music. Some people like music, but Bucky _loves_ music. He feels it in the base of his spine, the beat crawling up his discs—click, click, click—until it lodges near the top, a rhythm crawling under his skin, a movement that flicks the tips of his fingers and pulses in his blood. He throws his head back and laughs sometimes, the feeling bubbling up in him, the sheer joy of _being_ —of being here and _being_ —breaking across his features, like sunshine through a stormcloud.

He’s buzzy because of it and charming and beautiful, and it doesn’t go unnoticed. He takes a different dame each time—sometimes Elizabeth or Mary or Martha or Agatha or, once, a Mildred from Baltimore, Maryland, who had come up to visit a cousin for the weekend and found herself in the arms of Bucky Barnes. They love him, Bucky’s girls, and he loves them in his own way, as best he can, because he can’t take Jack or Richard or Ralph to the altar, but he’ll have to find a Jean or a Helen or maybe a Ruth who will pin her hair back just so and smile at him with red lips and promise to love him forever and to fill their house with children Bucky’s not sure he wants.

Still, it’s New York City and it’s the dead of summer and Bucky loves to dance.

It’s a night in the middle of July, when the city is alive and in love with itself, the heat oppressive, the humidity thick, the air sticking to forearms and legs, to the backs of necks and tops of foreheads. There are insects buzzing in the air and the ripe smell of rotting garbage, to say nothing of the sweat of bodies and salt on damp skin.

He picks up Dorothy, a sweet girl just turning the corner of nineteen, with caramel colored hair and eyes the color of grass. She’s five-foot-one inch even, give or take a solid two inches of heels, and she’s warm and she’s vibrant under Bucky’s hands as he turns her to the music, the two of them laughing into one another, spinning around and around, matching steps, matching the rhythm, her delicate hands at his waist and his larger ones at the small of her back. Dorothy smells like peonies and powdered soap and Bucky lingers near her temple, tries to breathe in the fresh scent of her, the solid feel of her under the press of his palms.

He wishes it was enough, on this beautiful, hot, electric summer night—wishes he could take happiness in the curve of her body against his, but it’s a superficial happiness at best, like when he was younger and pretended a cardboard box was a toy so that his Ma wouldn’t cry about how she couldn’t afford anything better.

Dorothy is funny and she’s pretty and she smiles up at him like she would let him take her home if he just asked and he knows that she would too—she’s not the first and he’s done it before, back when he still thought he could shake it off, shake _this_ off, this feeling, this core, seminal, true part of him—and Bucky wishes, not for the first time, that he could, that he could be genuinely, truly happy in that—that it would be enough, for him.

There’s a hollow ring in the center of him and a buzzing in his head and the summer night is spacious around him, eternal in the way that youth is, and he kisses her temple and leaves her to get a drink.

At the counter, he brushes elbows with someone, a fellow with dark hair and dark skin, with teeth as white as the moon and a mouth so full it makes Bucky want to swallow them whole. Bucky gives him a shallow smile instead, leans against the counter and orders something he can’t remember a moment later. The man, with his short-cropped hair orders something too, and he gives Bucky barely a glance before taking his drinks with him to some dame on the floor and Bucky can tell the happiness on him isn’t a brittle, shattering thing.

Bucky takes whatever the bartender gives him and drinks it in one swallow, ignoring the horrible burn in his throat and reveling in it too. He drinks something else and something else and then he’s loose and his head is fuzzy and he can almost forget the turn of his stomach, the disappointment that’s like molten lead in his center. He finds Dorothy again and smiles. This time when he kisses her, he’s only lucid enough to feel mild disinterest.

  
The night stretches on and Bucky dances. He drinks and he laughs and it’s another night to keep in his pocket, tucked away like polished marbles or a necklace he only takes out when he needs to run his fingers over the grooves of what is written there.  
  
  
He stumbles out of the dance hall with his jacket undone, the top of his shirt unbuttoned, his curls askew, his face flushed pink, grey-blue eyes glazed with liquor and his body loose with youth. He’s lost Dorothy somewhere along the way, but he supposes he had never thought to keep track of her anyway.

Bucky stumbles down the street in Brooklyn Heights, drunk and delirious, heart closed and eyes opened, one foot in front of the other with music drifting out behind him.

He’s wandering without purpose, letting the drifting moonlight and the distant shine of water guide him. He’s to the water then, palms pressed against the railing, a street lamp to his back.

Bucky gets a foot on the lower rung and hoists himself up, not thinking to do anything, but needing to be up—needing to be higher than he is—needing to feel the fresh air by the water against his terribly heated skin.

He gets to the second railing to the top and closes his eyes.

“That seems a little dangerous,” a low voice comes near his back.

Bucky is too drunk to feel afraid, but he’s not too drunk to pause. There’s something about that voice, something about a timber that lodges itself into his gut, holding there like an ache or the anticipation of comfort after years of pain.

He lowers his foot a rung, jumps down, and turns, heart beating erratically.

It’s difficult to see anything, this late at night and so close to the dark water, with only a single street lamp to illuminate the area.

“You always did get reckless after drinking too much,” the voice says again, amused and soft, and this time Bucky catches it—the voice and the movement, just beyond the lamp.

He comes into the light slowly, the amber lighting flickering over his features, and Bucky’s heart gives a short, sharp twist. The feeling holds there too, an unusual pain frozen in place. Bucky hasn’t spent five years obsessively remembering and retracing the lines of him, but he comes now like a striking dream or a vivid memory that Bucky could never quite remember, but had never managed to forget. He’s the same, all parts of him—the wide breadth of his chest and the hard slopes of his shoulder and honey-colored hair brushed back and slightly curling near his ears. The man’s eyes are still light, still bright in the dark surrounding them, and his smile is the same too, soft and framed by short, blond bristles, with a hint of unbearable sadness that’s only offset by crinkles at the corners that Bucky realizes he _has_ memorized.

“It’s you,” Bucky laughs, in slurred delight.

The smile widens then, softens further, until all traces of sadness have disappeared and it’s just Bucky and this man—this stranger—and this unbearably quiet, happy moment between them.

“You remember me?” the stranger asks.

“Yeah,” Bucky says. “I remember you.”

“How long has it been?” the stranger says and for the first time he looks less than completely sure of himself.

Bucky runs a tongue over his dry lips, wetting them and moving them together before answering.

“Five years,” he says. He hasn’t thought about the stranger since the day he met him, not really, hasn’t counted the days or engraved the encounter into his memories, but he still says it easily and knows it to be true, as though despite his effort—or lack thereof—he had paid attention anyway.

“Oh,” the stranger says. He seems to chew on this thought and in the meantime his gaze sweeps across Bucky, his eyes flickering up and down and back up, and Bucky feels a spark at the base of his spine, a heat light in the center of his stomach. “I see.”

Bucky sticks his hands in his pockets and wriggles a little, back and forth, just to have some motion, just to be able to do something while the stranger decides what to do—what he wants—and what he will say. Well, he’s never been too good at waiting, so he sucks in a breath, squares his shoulders, and looks back up.

“Steven Grant Rogers,” he says.

The man doesn’t move, but his expression changes. It grows both too cautious and too reckless; at once too shuttered and too open. He gives Bucky a look that can only be described as confusingly intimate. He harbors something close to hope.

It’s too much and not enough and Bucky’s head spins a little, his mind dizzy from confusion.

“I kept it,” Bucky says, to try and explain. “Your dog tags.”

The man’s expression clears, but only a little.

“You did?” he asks, softly.

Bucky ignores that.

“Is that you?” he asks. “Are you...Steven Grant Rogers?”

The man, standing stock still, takes in a breath. The air moves around him and suddenly Bucky sees a firefly settle on his shoulder.

“Yeah,” the stranger says. “Steve.”

“Steve,” Bucky repeats.

The stranger—Steve—takes another breath and the firefly startles off of him. Bucky watches it go, just a small glow blurring in the distance. He thinks if he reached out, he could catch it for him—for this stranger—for Steve—this firefly that had been between them, this tiny token of this tiny moment in time, and wouldn’t that at least be something?

“Did you have a nice night?” Steve asks, after a minute of quiet so deep it scrapes across Bucky’s skin.

Behind him, the water sloshes quietly and above him, the moon flickers behind a moving cloud.

“There was a gal,” Bucky finds himself saying.

“Yeah?” Steve says, with a half-smile.

“Her name was Dorothy,” Bucky says. “She was pretty.”

“I bet,” Steve says. His hands are still in his pocket and Bucky is overcome with a need—just a desperate, burning need—to take them out, to unfold them until they’re spread widely, Bucky’s thumb in the middle of his palm, to hold them between his slightly smaller hands and see what they will feel like pressed together. “They were always pretty.”

Bucky sways on his feet and Steve takes a step forward.

“I don’t care about that,” Bucky blurts out. He doesn’t know why he admits it to this person, this clear stranger, except that Steve watches him as though he’s privy to Bucky’s every thoughts and secrets and Bucky can’t bear to hide under a scrutiny such as that. Well, maybe he’s just drunk. Perhaps, he’s just tired.

It’s stupid, whatever the reason, but Bucky can’t seem to be cautious.

“No?” Steve laughs, softly, and Bucky likes that. He likes the sound of Steve’s laugh. “What do you care about then, Buck?”

That upsets Bucky. He stumbles forward, closing the distance between the two of them and Steve catches him by the wrists—strong, thick fingers encircling Bucky’s wrists, sending his pulse spiking, his breath catching in his chest.

“Who are you?” Bucky asks, looking up into light—blue, he can tell now that they’re blue—eyes and strong brows that seem like they’ve been etched with perpetual worry. “I don’t care about dames. I wish I did. Don’t you think that would be easier, Steve?”

Bucky can hear how sad he sounds—how desperately, terribly pathetic. He doesn’t care. Maybe he’s drunker than he thought.

“Yeah, Buck,” Steve says and he sounds sad too. “I do think that would be easier. For now.”

Bucky doesn’t know what that means. His blood sings and the heat presses closer between the two of them. He shakes his wrists free, but he doesn’t step away.

He touches Steve’s face, fingertips grazing sweet blond bristles across the bottom of his face. Steve has a kind face—kind eyes, kind brows, a kind nose—but Bucky likes this best, the bristles. He’s always liked the feeling against him, friction on his soft skin.

“Say,” Bucky says, looking up and catching him—catching those deep blue eyes. “Will you dance with me?”

“What?” the stranger—Steve—asks. “Here?”

More fireflies—the sound of the water, the sound of trees rustling in the breeze, the sound of life, somewhere behind them, somewhere far away, Brooklyn alive and humming and terrible and beautiful in a midsummer’s dream.

“Sure,” Bucky says, tilting his head back with drunken happiness. Maybe stupidity, too. “Why not here? Why not anywhere? You said you know me, right?”

Steve watches him quietly, his eyes tracing Bucky, every inch of him, and Bucky feels drunk—drunker than he is—drunk under the weight of those eyes.

“Yeah, Buck,” he says. “I do.”

“So dance with me then,” Bucky says and when he straightens this time, it’s with a pout on his full lips.

Steve shakes his head, but his eyes are sparkling. Even in the dark, they glow. They’re like fireflies, Bucky thinks. Steve is a firefly.

“Okay,” Steve says. “But there’s no music.”

“I’ll hum,” Bucky says and offers Steve his hand.

Steve takes it, one large hand in Bucky’s, the other, intertwining their fingers, catching their hands between their bodies. He’s larger than Bucky—God, so much larger—like Bucky’s being held firmly against a brick wall and it’s as overwhelming as it is painfully, exquisitely, exactly what Bucky wants.

Bucky does as he promised, humming something that he remembers from a record he can’t quite place, something slow and romantic and gauzy. He fits right against Steve’s chest, Steve’s body heat mingling with his own, a furnace against a furnace in the middle of a night that feels like a furnace. Bucky sweats and he has trouble breathing, but he thinks it’s not so much the heat as the situation—him and this stranger, him and Steve, dancing together under the Brooklyn moon on a night Bucky has already started to forget.

Steve holds him closer, his strong hand moving over Bucky’s side and finding a place at the small of Bucky’s back. Bucky shudders, just slightly, trembling minutely, and Steve carefully noses into the space left between Bucky’s shoulder and his neck.

Bucky inhales slightly, feeling dizzy, but Steve doesn’t stop, his bristles scratching against Bucky’s bare, damp skin, nuzzling into that space there as though he knows it well, as though it is his space to be safe in, as though he owns it in some way Bucky cannot reasonably deny.

They spin to Bucky’s humming slowly, heartbeats matching, one thud-thud-thud matching another and Bucky feels drunk with it—with Steve and this dance, this moment, and this entire night. It feels delicate, diaphanous, effervescent, and evanescent and words that he can’t bring to mind.

Bucky is twenty-three years old and the summer is hot and endless.

He dances with a stranger near the water, fireflies alight around them, the spectre of war a close, but distant presence. He closes his eyes and takes a deep, grounding breath and in his ears, he can hear Steve’s heart beat, strong, steady, and reassuring, like a lifeboat carrying him safely to shore.

*

**(1941-1944.)**

The spectre of war boils over by 1941. Bucky is drafted in January of 1942, to the heartbreak of his Ma and his own bone-weary resignation, a young man who hopes the eye will pass over him, but never really expects it. He holds the letter in his hands the day he tears the envelope between his fingers, reading and crumpling and smoothing it, something slotting into stomach, not horrible, churning anticipation, but resigned acceptance of this thing that he has thought to avoid, but which has caught him in the end anyway.

  
He spends thirteen weeks in basic training at Camp McCoy, Wisconsin, climbing ropes and crawling through mud and running until the soles of his feet feel bloody with pain and the rest of his body aches with lack of relief. He learns to school his face when he’s yelled at and say _Sir, yes, sir_ no matter what is asked of him. He laughs at every dirty joke told by his fellow trainees and shares some of his own, at the expense of others, even at the expense of himself. He learns to live with dirt caked under his fingernails, with callouses on his palms that he hasn’t seen in years, and a thin layer of grime that sticks to his skin no matter how many short, cold showers he takes. He learns to live without hair gel, without the laughter of his sisters or the kind grace of his mother; he learns to live without music. He forgets how to dance, but he learns how to shoot a gun.

It’s worse than that. Knowledge comes to Bucky easier than he expects it to. He’s not just good with a gun, he’s great with it. He hates its violence, but loves its weight. He stares out of the scope, crawls forward on his belly, stops, takes a breath, and shoots.

He rarely misses.

It’s a rhythm in his head—the focus, the click, the breath, the trigger—like a song that beats against his collarbone, a beat he sucks in and forcibly exhales. The recoil doesn’t disrupt his aim, but makes it better, the kick reverberating down his arms, vibrating through his bones to the tips of his toes. He shoots like he dances, which is not to say with any kind of joy, but with a kind of natural grace that cannot be taught.

It earns Bucky special training and by the end he’s not just another cadet, offering his life to his country on a star-spangled platter, but a sniper with an unimpeachable record, the best of the best, James Buchanan Barnes, with curls that lay flat against his head and blue eyes as blunt as the tip of the barrel of a gun.

The war is the war, as far as these things go.

Bucky ships with the 107th, going to England first before they go anywhere else. He has good men in his regiment—Sergeant Dum Dum Dugan and James Montgomery Falsworth and Private Jim Morita and his old friend and roommate Gabe Jones, who Bucky is delighted to see again. They’re good men and even better friends, which makes the war brutal by day and more bearable by night.

Who cares how many men Bucky’s shot through the eyes by daylight when the ones who matter are willing to drink with him, to laugh with him—as men at war must, dirt caked under their nails, the taste of blood and gunpowder coating the back of their throats, nightmares to wake them up in the middle of the night and sometimes during the day, when they forget to pay attention, when they rest their eyes for a moment and jerk awake with screams that have to be muffled by the hand next to them—to sing bawdy songs and share letters from back home.

That’s what Bucky tells himself, as much as he can. He has no one to write to back home other than his Ma and the girls, and he thinks that’s why other men swallow their impulses and find someone to get hitched to, because it might not be what they want, but in the middle of war, want is less urgent than need and at the end of the day, what they need—each and every one of them—is assurance that they’re doing all of this for something, for someone, for some reason or purpose that will become clear to them when they’re trembling in the trenches, flinching from the sound of grenades so close the reverberations make their teeth rattle.

  
In 1944, while serving on the frontlines, Bucky and his unit are ambushed by Wehrmacht soldiers near a small village in the Northeast of Italy. Things happen to them then, terrible things that Bucky will one day remember only through sheer force and the rest of which he will choose to forget, when possible. He loses good men that he’s met, friends and soldiers, and he dies too—dies and comes back to life, every sinew screaming, torn apart and sewn hastily back together. There is torture, of course, but there are also experiments, things he stays awake for and other things for which he is blessedly asleep, if being asleep in a nightmare can be considered a blessing.

They are rescued, eventually. Bucky doesn’t remember much of that either. He’s on a slab, at death’s door, and there are arms around him, a body he doesn’t recognize and a face he’s never seen before. A Captain, he’s told later, but he can’t listen very well through the sound of screaming tearing through his head.

He’s given a chance to leave and he would take it, except he would be the only one. The others—Dum Dum and Jim and Gabe and James—are loyal—to the country, to the army, to a higher ideal that Bucky can’t focus on long enough to feel in that place in his chest where such feelings go. They say they will follow this Captain and Bucky is tired and he is battered, but he’s a good man too, so he stays. It kills him to stay, but it would kill him to go.

The Bucky Barnes that came to war won’t be the Bucky Barnes that goes back home.

This, too, is how wars go.

  
So 1944 ends and Bucky’s bones ache and he can never fully get warm anymore, but that’s only side effects—small, almost meaningless spasms when the problem is that his hands shake and his head pounds and he can’t seem to sleep through the night. There’s a fear that lodges deep in his throat, carves itself into his ribs like metal bones that flare when touched by flame or a toothache that is always there, but is only terrible when you push a tongue against it.

He’s never been afraid, before, not really, but he is afraid now.

It is a terrible thing, to be afraid in the middle of a war.

*

**1945\. (28 years)**

It’s 1945 and Bucky has been at war for three years. He’s a Sergeant now, has been for a few years, for whatever that’s worth—a title and a badge, a congratulations and a thank you for your peace and your sanity and for losing your humanity to take out Nazi scum, for this sacrifice and a hundred smaller deaths, your country thanks you. What this means is that he’s not in the trenches and what it also means is that he’s given his own small tent to escape to if he’s too tired to drink with the others. It’s a good enough consolation prize, as far as these things go, a thin sheet of privacy and a cot on the cold English ground instead of bedrolls around a campfire.

He’s no fun anymore, is the truth of it, but he tries to smile back when smiled at and if he’s slower to laugh or less likely to make jokes, that’s excused, because everyone knows that Sergeant Barnes was sent to Italy an All-American boy and what he had come back as was an All-American veteran. That’s not to say that people don’t look after him, because they do; Dum Dum’s eyes track his Sergeant’s movements closely and Gabe Jones drags him drinking when he’s been too quiet by half and on nights when his screams rend the quiet night air, it’s Morita who unzips his tent and kneels by his cot with a glass of lukewarm water.

Bucky loves them, his Howling Commandos, as much as he can—as much as he is still capable of—but the truth is that he oversees his soldiers, makes sure that his unit is well-trained and well-behaved and listening to higher orders from Margaret Carter and Colonel Phillips and the Captain, before coming back to his tent, his head filled with the buzzing of a hundred bees, an ache in his left arm, and flashes of memories and nightmares that he can’t abide. He strips out of his uniform down to his skivvies, crawls into his cot, and closes his eyes, trying to will sleep that rarely comes easily.

Tonight is no different. It’s March of 1945 and the war is going well, or so the American and British commanders instruct. Whether that’s true or a positive lie spun to keep soldiers in spirits until their time, eventually, inevitably, comes is not something Bucky can speak to. He does not question it, at least, which is the least he can do for his unit and for the Howling Commandos, who between them contain so much confidence that it would kill Bucky to tell them otherwise.

So he doesn’t. It’s a warm March night, insects buzzing distantly in the air and the moon clean and bright as a lamp hanging in the middle of the pitch black sky. They’re drinking. Of course they drink most nights, but tonight is a louder drinking, drinking full of song and the relieved jubilation of victory, rather than death. Something good has happened in the front in Japan and although no one is quite sure what, they are sure that it is a victory for the Allied forces, which means they’re one day closer to finishing this interminable war, one day closer to ending this nightmare, one day closer to going home.

It’s a good night to drink. Dum Dum’s voice is clear and deep, ringing out in ballads across the dark space, and Gabe and Monty are dancing and there are half a dozen other soldiers from his unit who are laughing and half a dozen other soldiers from another unit who are singing around the campfire.

Bucky allows Dum Dum to manhandle him into two drinks, but once the singing and dancing starts in earnest, he nurses a beer to finish and picks himself up. He offers an apologetic smile to his old friend and avoids a knowing look from Gabe, who has known him better than any person Bucky has ever reasonably allowed.

He doesn’t make excuses, but no one is really looking for one anyway. The singing continues and Bucky is happy for them—for his men, for the soldiers who had come expecting one thing and been given another thing altogether—but he can’t muster that same happiness for himself. He craves victory only as a means to an end; the act of victory gives him little joy in and of itself. In truth, he is tired. In truth, Bucky Barnes is lonely.

He avoids most of the encampment easily, or so he thinks, until he hears his name on a voice as soft as cotton, with crisp syllables that make him stand at attention, although he hasn’t been a private for many years.

Agent Margaret Carter emerges from her own tent, a kind smile on her face. She’s traded her military uniform for a dress of blood red that fits her where it matters and flares out at the hips, so even standing still she looks as though she is in motion. Peggy’s hair is picture perfect, dark brown curls pinned back at the side of her head, with larger curls curving over her slender shoulders. Her lips are bright red and her dark eyes are sparkling. Bucky doesn’t know Agent Carter half as well as most of his unit would like to, but he always has the unsettled feeling that she knows him more than half as well as he wants her to.

She’s a knockout either way. Bucky can appreciate that; can admit she’s gorgeous by any standard, even if that standard doesn’t take his breath away. He returns her smile and it feels like he’s already telling her a lie he hasn’t meant to say.

“You’re leaving early,” Peggy says. It isn’t phrased like a question, but it presses against Bucky like one. Peggy’s smile is kind and her eyes are compassionate, but he stays away from her as often as he can, because when he’s caught like this—all of him pinned by her sharp gaze—he can’t help but feel she _knows_ or, at least, that she sees him as clearly as Gabe does.

“I stayed a while,” Bucky says. Then, feeling the need to offer an explanation, says, “I wasn’t feeling the best.”

“Is everything all right?” Peggy asks and her eyebrows scrunch slightly.

Bucky offers her another lie; that is to say, a smile.

“Nothing a little sleep won’t fix,” he says.

Peggy makes a little humming noise.

“Sometimes I wonder,” she says.

Bucky frowns.

“Pardon?”

Peggy Carter shifts and there it is again, the movement of her dress, as though she’s shimmering in crimson.

“There are things ending the war will fix,” she says, softly. “And other things that it won’t. Those things we will always have to live with, won’t we, James?”

Bucky swallows. He doesn’t like it when she calls him by his name. It’s not the name itself, it’s being called by it; being called anything. Sometimes, he wishes he could blur the edges of himself, just smudge the person he’s become into something less solid.

“Isn’t that always the case?” Bucky asks. “With or without war?”

He’s thinking of secrets kept, secrets from before the war, secrets that the war doesn’t make any worse or any better. He wonders how many soldiers have died with those secrets. He wonders how many of his friends he’s lost without knowing.

“I suppose so,” Peggy says. “The war doesn’t make it any better, though.”

He can’t argue with that.

“Do you sleep well, usually?” Peggy asks and this time her voice is softer, almost curious.

Bucky wants to lie again. He wishes he had that ability, or, maybe, that reserve left. Instead, when he thinks about it, all he’s left with is an unshakeable, unmitigated, bone-deep weariness. Sometimes, when you bury your head in the sand, all you’re left with is the truth.

“No,” he says.

Peggy says nothing for a moment. In the moonlight, she watches him. Bucky wonders what secrets Agent Margaret Carter has and whether, one day, she will find someone to share them with.

“Me neither,” she says, finally.

“The war?” Bucky asks, quietly.

Peggy shakes her head slightly and her curls move with her. Bucky is distracted, for a moment, by one that comes unpinned.

“For starters,” is all she says.

Bucky has his hand to her hair before he can think twice. It’s only when she takes in a soft, rattling breath that he realizes what he’s done—how close he’s come.

He takes a nervous breath and is overwhelmed by her—her sharp eyes and her red mouth and a scent that is both floral and bright, notes that are fresh and stinging, just like every part of her that he’s come to know.

He somehow keeps his hands from shaking and helps pin her curl back again.

“Sorry,” he says. “It came loose.”

Peggy’s silence is so deep it nearly cracks Bucky’s bones. He thinks she can tell, somehow, that he is affected by her, that just by existing here, across from him, he is overpowered by what he cannot understand and what he wishes he knew to crave.

Peggy Carter is every man’s untold and unmanifested dream and even here, in front of him, her mouth just parted, her lines all in red, wreathed in moonlight, all Bucky feels is relief that she will belong to someone else.

“Thank you,” she says and presses a hand to Bucky’s shoulders. “Sleep well, Sergeant. If you are able.”

“Thank you,” Bucky replies, quietly.

Peggy takes a step back from Bucky and then, with another kind, too-knowing smile, she walks toward the rest of the regiment.

Bucky watches her go, every curve of her, and wants nothing.

  
He opens the flap to his own tent, slipping inside with his blood rattling loudly in the back of his head. He shrugs out of his jacket and undoes the first few buttons of his light green regulation shirt. His fingers brush the metal chain about his neck; he can hear the dog tags rustling against his chest. He lets out a breath that hurts his lungs and runs a hand through his hair to loosen his curls.

He considers another drink.

“Buck,” a voice says.

At first he thinks he’s misheard. The sound fades in the quiet of the tent and echoes loudly around the confines of his head. He lives with flashes of half-real memories and things that he is certain never happened to him. He has lived with this voice for so long, he’s not sure it’s ever existed.

But his heart rate ticks up anyway, a painful, horrible feeling pressing against his chest, like hope in the shape of an anvil.

“Bucky,” the voice says again and this time Bucky looks up.

The tent isn’t large and it isn’t well-lit, but that does nothing to diminish him, all six foot-whatever inches of him, two hundred odd pounds of pure muscle, and an expression that makes Bucky want to cry.

“Steve?” Bucky asks and he feels watery even if he doesn’t sound it.

Steve flickers and Bucky almost panics, thinking that this is another dream, that he’s stuck in the middle of another nightmare, reality flickering in and out of existence—a cold table in a cold place in the middle of a foreign country less than a handful of years ago, when his body was pinioned with pain, his mind hazy from it, only flashes of memories and the fleeting memory of himself, slipping through his fingers as he struggled to stay alive—his throat closing out of fear, but no, it’s just that Steve has moved and the lone lamp in the tent has pitchy light that does reality no justice.

“Are you okay?” Steve asks. He takes a step toward Bucky and stops. He takes another and thinks better of it. His arms hang by his sides and Bucky aches to close the distance.

He takes a shaky breath and swallows the bile of Azzano.

“I didn’t realize it’s been five years,” Bucky says.

Steve’s expression shadows a little and Bucky reaches for him at last, fingers grazing the other man’s hand.

“Once every five years,” Bucky says. “I’ve kept count.”

Steve sucks in a little breath and nods. He watches Bucky closely and Bucky closes his eyes then, not wanting to see himself reflected in those deep blues, not as he is now, twenty-eight and battered and haunted by the ghost of war.

“Your hair has grown,” is what Steve says instead and Bucky’s eyes are startled open at the touch near his temple.

“Not a whole lot of options,” Bucky says wryly. “In the middle of a battlefield.”

“I remember,” Steve says with a small smile that flares in the center of Bucky’s chest.

That Steve could look at him as he is and still touch him with kindness.

“Were you a soldier?” Bucky asks. Then, “Are you?”

He doesn’t know a thing about this man, this stranger whose eyes Bucky has held onto since he was eighteen years old.

“Yeah,” Steve says. His fingers cautiously scrape against Bucky’s scalp and Bucky inhales sharply. Steve pauses, but Bucky stops his hand before it moves away, holding it in place. “I was. And I am still. In my own way.”

Steve twists a curl around his finger and tugs on it. It’s so startling that Bucky blinks in surprise. That doesn’t seem to stymy the other man. Steve gives him a soft smile and does it again.

His heart clatters around the hollow in his chest.

For the first time in three years, Bucky smiles.

“Did you like it?”

Steve’s smile is wry then, quiet and mocking, like a secret held between the two of them.

“I’ve never been a very good soldier,” he confesses. “I’m terrible at taking orders.”

Bucky laughs at that—actual, honest to god laughs—and Steve’s fingers drift down until he’s cupping Bucky’s cheek.

“Why are you still here?” Steve asks. “You’ve never been a fighter.”

“How would you know?” Bucky asks. He sounds only a little bitter, but even that tone softens as Steve rubs a thumb against his jaw.

“I know everything about you,” Steve says.

Bucky swallows and feels the heavy weight of grief press against him—an anchor against his shoulders, chains around his waist dragging him down under cloudy, impenetrable water. He wishes that were true, he thinks. He wishes any of this were true.

“Will you—” Bucky starts and then bites back the words he’s never said. His fingers curl into the front of Steve’s shirt, his nails biting into solid flesh under his grasp.

His mind feels heavy, his head shrouded in conflicted feelings—desire and guilt and longing and selfish need and inevitability—his breathing coming up shallow, ragged.

Steve moves his hand back, curved over Bucky’s scratchy jaw, sliding down his neck and back up until it rests at the back, a pressure that’s so firm that it nearly makes Bucky’s eyes roll into the back of his head.

Steve has whole inches on him, so when he bends to press his mouth against Bucky’s, Bucky feels all of it, every inch, a shadow and presence so thick it wraps around him like a weighted blanket.

Bucky lets out a soft noise, like a small hurt that’s been punched out of him, and Steve’s fingers spread against the back of his neck, holding him there as he kisses him, lips prying Bucky’s open until Bucky’s gasping for air in the heat of Steve’s mouth, his own skin heating and his chest constricting—for air, for feeling, for the electric sparks that are crawling down his spine.

Steve’s bristles rub against Bucky’s smoother skin and he’s left pink from it, his face raw from the friction, a pain so slight as to be pleasurable. Bucky’s a little louder this time, but Steve swallows his noises, one hand pinning Bucky at his neck and the other on Bucky’s hip, keeping him in place like an iron vice that burns through Bucky’s shirt onto his skin.

Bucky deepens the kiss, reaching up on his tiptoes now, his arms sliding around Steve’s broad shoulders, until Steve slides his hand down to Bucky’s lower back and breathlessly, with barely an effort, he hoists Bucky up, as easily as he would pick up a rag doll, and that goes to Bucky’s gut, a boiling heat that unfurls as Steve takes steps toward the cot.

Bucky’s not above begging, but he hopes he doesn’t have to, not for this—not for what he needs. Steve moves his mouth away from Bucky’s and kisses his way across Bucky’s jaw, roving the length of his neck, his beard leaving behind pink skin that’s tender to the touch.

“Please,” Bucky says—whispers—voice strangled, his nails digging into the meat of Steve’s shoulder, not kindly, as hard as he can, because Steve can take it and, to his credit, Steve seems to barely notice except for being pleased.

Steve holds Bucky as close as he can—firmly, steadily, a safe cage for Bucky’s body—as he bends to his knees and lowers Bucky to the cot. Bucky wraps his legs tighter around him then and pulls back, his hand at Steve’s face.

He can still see blue in the middle of pupils so dark, they’ve become nearly black with something maddeningly close to possession.

“We can be quiet,” Bucky begs. “No one will care.”

Steve kisses him again and Bucky holds him there, makes him stay in place because he’s afraid that if he lets him go, he’ll vanish, like the good things from his dreams. Steve lets him, uses the breadth and weight of his whole body to press Bucky to the cot, a weight so hot and all-encompassing that it nearly whites Bucky’s mind out with pleasure.

Steve on his knees on Bucky’s cot, one hand like a brand to Bucky’s stomach, not on top of his clothes, but somehow slipped under, so he can feel every indentation of the other man’s fingers against him. Bucky sucks in a breath and his head goes dizzy with it, his entire body a live wire, sparks bursting across his skin and at the back of his head.

Steve breaks for breath and the two of them stay suspended like that, eyes closed, foreheads pressed together, overwhelmed by something Bucky couldn’t name, but knows is the reason that they’re here, that they’re there, that Steve keeps coming back to him, time and time again. It’s the reason his skin is flushed and his heart is racing and chest aching.

Steve opens his eyes and Bucky is loath to look into them, but he does anyway and what he finds is an expression Bucky knows he wears too—inexplicable and endless, an unfathomable basin of feeling too strong to acknowledge with words.

Bucky runs his nails over Steve’s beard, curls his hand into Steve’s honey blond waves, and pulls him closer, kissing him to stop him from looking that way; kissing him to stop him from leaving.

This, too, Steve allows.

He kisses Bucky delicately, presses bruises into his sides, but it’s done with a wall so transparent Bucky aches to kiss Steve and feel it under his lips.

“Stay,” Bucky says. “Don’t go.”

Steve smiles against his mouth, but it’s a lie, too, Bucky knows that lie like he knows his reflection or the length of his shadow behind him.

“Don’t leave me again,” Bucky begs.

Steve kisses Bucky’s cheek, and his jaw, and his nose, and each of his eyelids.

He sits up and Bucky goes to him, shoves himself as close as he can be, and Steve holds him against him, runs a hand up Bucky’s chest until his fingers entangle with his chain.

Steve breaks the kiss only long enough to pull out the dog tags. He turns them over in his large palms and sucks in a breath.

There are two of them.

He looks up at Bucky and Bucky struggles to hold onto what’s left of him—of Bucky Barnes, of the boy he used to be, of the person the war made him, and of him, in the future, if that was a possibility he was still allowed.

“I held onto them,” he says. “Just like you asked.”

Steve says nothing. He lifts both dog tags to his mouth, presses a kiss or a blessing to them, and tucks them back against Bucky’s chest.

Steve leans forward to kiss him again and this time, he hasn’t even pulled away before Bucky is left aching for more.

Between one breath and the other, Steve leaves him. Bucky doesn’t see him go, but he feels him disappear. When he opens his eyes, it’s just him on his cot, with the lamp flickering in the empty quiet of his tent. Bucky takes in a hard, painful breath, and then, with devastation, presses his palms into his eyes until, eventually, he stops feeling Steve’s hands carefully worshipping his tired body.

  
The Germans unconditionally declare surrender on May 8, 1945. The U.S. levels two Japanese cities with atomic bombs in August of that year and the whole affair draws to a close swiftly after that.

By September, the war has ended. By September, Bucky Barnes has shipped home.

He cradles two dog tags to his chest and weeps when he sees the Statue of Liberty.

*

**1950\. (33 years)**

The war ends with startling swiftness after six grueling years that exact a toll so high that scientists agree it might not be measurable in any of their given lifetimes. That’s all fine and well because some things aren’t at all measurable, like how loyalty to your country can make a killer out of you and the nightmares you must suffer because of that, even if it was for a good reason, even if it was for the right cause.

Everything after that settles into a normalcy so unexpectedly mundane that it’s almost eerie. Bucky returns to New York City with more limbs than many of his brothers, but with less peace than others. The thing about being one of the country’s best sharpshooters is that he had been called on to shoot _a lot_ and in the middle of the trenches that had seemed like the correct call, but lying in his bed, in the spare bedroom of his Ma’s new apartment—new because she and the girls had moved during the war, not new because it was actually a new building they could afford—he could see only the pale and frightened faces of men whose lives he had taken.

Don’t get him wrong, Bucky spares no sympathy for dead Nazis, but war is never as clear cut as all that and he’s left wondering, now that it’s all said and done, how many were actually evil and how many were just thrown into war because someone somewhere they had never met told them they had to join and they had had no real choice in the matter. On nights when his body aches and his head buzzes and all he remembers is a group of pale villains experimenting on him and his friends, Bucky thinks—oh, doesn’t he know what that’s like.

  
The next few years pass in a strange haze. Bucky’s happy that he’s back and he’s happy that the war is over, but it doesn’t feel real, to go get a job and return to the boxing gym and fall back into the same routines he had had before he had shipped out, as though nothing had changed and nothing had happened in between.

The world doesn’t wait for lost men to catch up, though, so Bucky grits his teeth and tries to calm the slight shake in his limbs and even though he receives a modest pension from the United States Government for his service, he tucks his hat between his hands and shows up at the door to the law office he used to work at.

This, too, is a mistake, because it’s been eight years and not only have his bosses moved, but the entire business has been shuttered. Well, that’s a hard pill for Bucky to swallow. The train ride back to Brooklyn that day is hot, disappointing, and interminably long.

He’s out of employ, with little skills to commend himself—if no one is in need of a world class sniper—for long enough that the only place he can get any kind of solace is at the boxing gym.

That, at least, gives Bucky the kind of support that he’s been sorely missing since the European Theater. He’s delighted to not only box his anxiety and the noxious memories out of his brain, but to keep his body fit also, well-trained and strong. His old friend Gabe Jones ends back up there and that’s a relief as well. They don’t talk as much as they used to—war makes quiet young men who used to be loud—but they spar together and then they go and grab drinks after and slowly, slowly, Bucky begins to piece his shattered life back together.

  
As it turns out, boxing does more than keep his back muscles sculpted. The owner of Goldie’s, a man named Davey Wilson Jones, is impressed not only by Bucky’s dedication, but also with his form. The man—65 if he’s a day—respects the boys who came back from war and likes Bucky’s smart mouth and even smarter right hook besides, and offers him a job as a trainer.

It doesn’t pay a whole lot, but it pays enough and Bucky is grateful for this—a bit of kindness in the only place he’s felt at home since the ship docked at New York Harbor.

  
The gym keeps him busy and that makes Bucky grateful. He’s brought on in 1947 and spends most of that year training scrappy kids with split lips and floppy hair and taking gals out for a dance on his nights off, if he feels like it. It keeps him busy and it keeps him safe and, most of all, it leaves his head quiet, even on nights he would most like to scream.

  
Well, it’s not the life he had expected, but he makes his peace with it. By 1950, Bucky is beloved at the gym, a manager as well as a trainer, and he has Gabe and Monty and a handful of other guys from the ring to drink with, and he’s saved up enough to take out a place by himself.

Both Becca and Charlotte marry, one after the other, then Becca has him his first niece. The first time he holds her, she’s so tiny in his rough hands, he nearly cries. She looks up at him with big, blue-grey eyes and tufts of brown hair scattered across her soft little head, and she doesn’t cry, but she does wrap a tiny, delicate hand around his thumb. That _does_ , in fact, make him cry, although he saves it for when he’s back in his apartment, alone.

It’s only then, far away from his family, that he can grieve freely for a life he will never have, if only because he is too stubborn to pretend that he wants it.

  
Still, it’s not the worst life at all, if the nightmares and the cold flashes can be ignored. He has a good enough time with the gals he takes out, even though he gets older and they all seem to be getting younger. He tires of the scene relatively quickly, but it’s worse to be thirty-three years old and still a bachelor than it is to take a twenty-two year old out to dinner once or twice a week. They’re usually genial enough and Bucky even calls on a couple of them again, just for the delight of their company.

That’s not to say the war rids him of his bad habits. There’s always places to find the kind of people that he wants and although he changes what bars he goes to and when, he doesn’t find himself empty-handed for it. He’s able to take home a fella at least once a week and if his neighbors notice a different guy coming in and out of Bucky’s place a couple of times, well they say nothing, because they know who the Howling Commandos were and they can hear his haunted screams at night.

There are a couple of fellas Bucky eventually sees regularly, although it’s nothing too serious, and doesn’t last as long as all that. Tommy works at a mechanic’s garage four days a week and Peter does accounting at a small firm in New Jersey and Harry works in advertising, although Bucky’s never really asked for what. They’re good guys and they’re good to grab a bite with and even better in bed, but there’s always something missing, something he can’t quite place and isn’t quite willing to look at by the light of day.

Each of them ask Bucky about the dog tags and Bucky, not willing to share that secret, is careful to never answer. They trace the chain all the way down, until their fingers brush the tags, but he usually jerks away and gets his mouth on them and then they’re not so interested in anything else anymore.

  
So 1950 is fine, as far as years go. Bucky lives with the war in his bones, but he has a job that he loves and a growing family to visit on the weekends and in his free time he goes dancing and he fucks who he wants to fuck and he drinks with people who genuinely adore him. It is more than enough for him to be grateful for an entire lifetime.

He isn’t, though.

He tries, but god, he just isn’t.

  
He’s helping Becca bring home groceries one evening, a balmy, borderline humid spring day near the end of May, that stretch of a few weeks before the residual chilliness of winter gives away entirely to the thick, suffocating heat of a New York City summer. It’s a quiet evening and Joe’s taking care of Annie so that Becca can leave the house and stretch her legs.

They meet for ice cream after Bucky gets off his shift at the gym, the two of them winding their way in circles around McCarren Park, stopping to watch children out with their parents and lovers in their nice dresses and dress shirts, New Yorkers breathing a moment’s peace as the horrors of untold death recede to distant memory. Bucky gets chocolate chip mint and Becca gets just vanilla, with sprinkles, and it’s just like when they were children, except Charlotte lives in New Jersey now and they’re old enough to walk through a park without scraping up their elbows or getting dirt on their knees.

They don’t stay too long, but they stay long enough to catch up, Becca telling Bucky about how quickly Annie is learning to talk and Bucky making his sister laugh with stories of the dumb kids he teaches to fight. The air is warm around them and the moon creeps higher and higher in the darkening night sky. Cicadas buzz behind the trees and the soft sounds of laughter drift over Brooklyn, a feeling as comfortable and soothing as coming home.

  
It’s a beautiful, spring night and Bucky smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. He finishes his ice cream cone and he picks a daisy to give to Becca and Becca asks if he would help her pick up a few things. Well, he’s all the way over in Greenpoint, so he figures why the hell not.

She fills a basket with fresh produce, milk, bread, and eggs, which end up in Bucky’s arms owing to reasons of “You’re the boxer here, Buck. Don’t let those muscles go to waste.”

It’s such a little sister thing to do, but it makes Bucky chuckle, so he carries her groceries without too much complaint.

They walk back in the comfortable kind of silence that is so soft, it’s almost sleepy. He’s tired and grateful for it, the chance to be with his sister, someone who has known him through all of the happiness and great griefs of his life, even if she didn’t quite know why she was holding his hand or the reason he was crying. He lets himself drift in this comfortable space between them, his thoughts floating away from him, like balloons being released at the edge of water.

He doesn’t realize how long the walk back is or how much he’s been brooding until he feels a slight shoulder press against his own.

“A penny for your thoughts?” Becca asks.

“Just a penny?” Bucky manages to smile. “Pretty low rate.”

“How many thoughts can there possibly be in there?” his sister asks, an eyebrow raised. She looks just like their mother this way and that makes Bucky actually laugh, something genuine, from the heart.

He shakes his head ruefully and Becca chews on that silence.

“Can I say something?”

“Saying no ever stop you before?” Bucky teases and Becca nudges his side again.

“No,” she says and smiles. She fiddles with the strap of her purse and lets out a slow breath. “When you’re upset, your shoulders always hunch up near your ears.”

Bucky’s easy smile fades a little.

“What?”

“Your back gets kind of rounded, like you’re holding all that tension back there. And you run your hand through your hair and clench your jaw and always look like you’re going to cry.”

“Becca, what—”

“Bucky,” Becca says, softly. “Your shoulders have been up near your ears so long, I’ve forgotten what you look like when they come down.”

Bucky swallows, thickly. Suddenly, his hands feel clammy, his heartbeat uneven.

“It’s the war,” he says. “You don’t do something like that and come back and sleep well at night.”

It’s not a lie. His headaches; his nightmares; the trembling in his limbs and the flashes of half-memories aren’t a lie.

“Maybe,” Becca says. “I know you had it rough, Buck. I know there are things that happened to you there that you never told us.”

Bucky says nothing.

“If I thought it was only that, I wouldn’t say anything,” she says.

Bucky can’t close his eyes and walk at the same time, or he would. Instead, he listens to a buzzing sound that grows louder with every foot he puts in front of the other.

“Bucky,” Becca says and her voice is so quiet, so desperate, he almost doesn’t hear it. No, he hears it. He almost doesn’t acknowledge it. But his little sister puts a hand on his elbow and Bucky can’t help but stop, can’t help but look at her.

Bucky loves his family. He’s been dealt a bad hand of cards in a couple of different ways, but his family wasn’t one of them. His Ma’s an angel and his sisters are the lights of his life.

He wishes that were enough.

Looking at Becca, with her brown ringlets and blue-grey eyes, the dimple they share in their chin, it’s like looking into a mirror. The reflection is too-seeing and slightly unforgiving. No, that’s not right. The truth is that the reflection is too forgiving, _too_ understanding, and that makes Bucky feel awful—it makes his heart clench in his chest.

She knows, he thinks.

All of the secrets he has ever kept, his baby sister knows.

“Becca,” Bucky tries to say, but his voice comes out a hoarse whisper, something pained and raw.

“We want you to be happy, Buck,” Becca says. “Whatever that means for you.” A pause. “ _Whoever_ that means for you.”

Bucky has never said it out loud—not to anyone who matters. There are those who knew, because they were there to see, and there were others that suspected, because you can’t live in close quarters for six years and not deduce some things.

But he’s never actually said it, never formed the words, or acknowledged them in any meaningful way.

It’s clear to him now that he never had to. That maybe, at the end of the day, the only person he had been hiding from had been himself.

“I don’t—” he tries, but he doesn’t manage to form the words and anyway he doesn’t know what he’s trying to say. Blindly, irrationally, he wants to apologize to her. He wants to tell her _I’m sorry_ , wants to take her hands and his Ma’s and Charlotte’s and press his forehead against theirs and say, over and over again, _I’m sorry, I wish it could be different, I’m sorry._

“For what, Bucky?” Becca asks, quietly and Bucky realizes that maybe he’s been speaking out loud anyway and that his voice is shaking and that he’s crying.

Gently, Becca takes the groceries from him. She puts them down on the ground and although his baby sister is nearly half a foot shorter than him, although she’s slight and little and she’s his _baby sister_ , she wraps her arms around him, pulls Bucky to her chest, and lets him cry.

*

“Whatever you choose, know that we love you,” Becca says to him, on the steps of her porch. She presses a hand to his face and kisses his forehead. “Whoever you choose, know that we are proud.”

*

He scrubs at his face, feeling raw, his entire being so porous it’s as though the street light can filter straight through him. He stops halfway back to his apartment, just stops in the middle of a sidewalk, fingers curled into the wire fence next to him.

He presses his other hand to his chest, his fingers curved around his dog tags, a sudden hurt so sharp he can’t breathe around it.

Bucky inhales sharply, just sucks in a breath and before he can control it, sinks to his knees. He lets go of the fence and presses his palms to his eyes.

It spreads through him like wildfire, the ache, this knowledge—or lack thereof—this half-life of half-lived truths, a loneliness he’s lived with for so long that it’s nearly become a part of him, tendrils curled around his limbs, a feeling that gnaws at him, claws dug into flesh, thorns rupturing the surface of his lungs.

He’s been unhappy for so long that he hasn’t even realized it; would never have realized it, but for Becca looking at him, seeing through him, and naming that part of him he’s tucked so close to himself that it’s nearly corroded away entirely.

He wants to stay, but he wants to go. He wants something he can never have, a person he’s not sure exists.

Bucky clasps the dog tags tighter, his thoughts swirling, and his grip is so painfully strong, they bend in half.

  
He stays there, cowering and trembling, until the shocking feeling of fingers against his own startles him. They slowly, carefully pry his hands away from his face.

“What,” Bucky croaks, his heart beating fast, his nerves ratcheting high—but the syllable dries in his throat.

The street lamp flickers above them.

“Hi, stranger.”

A familiar set of eyes glow at him, thick fingers against his own, the light from the lamp catching on hair that Bucky has run his hands through; that he has spent nights dreaming about; that he has committed to memory, the color of and the feeling of.

Bucky forgets to take a breath.

“What are you down here for?”

Steve’s face never changes. Since he was eighteen years old, Bucky has seen this same face, has remembered it, has dreamt of it. His lines are the same—the same curves of his cheeks, the same bump along the ridge of his nose, the same outline of his jaw and the same soft, honey-colored bristles and clear blue eyes and full lips that Bucky has tasted and never forgotten. Time changes, the world ebbs and flows, and Steve Rogers always stays the same.

Bucky aches for him; aches for this, his constancy, his smile and the lines around his eyes and the way he looks at Bucky as though he has known him his entire life. Bucky has never felt present here; he has drifted in this life without him.

“Steve,” Bucky breathes, his voice cracking, and then he’s pushing himself into Steve’s arms.

Steve’s arms go around him as they stumble up to their feet and Steve’s face is nestled into Bucky’s neck, pressing gentle kisses into the side of his head and into his hair, murmuring things like _It’s okay_ and _I’m here_ and _I’m sorry I was away for so long_ and Bucky shakes into his embrace, breathing in his scent, feeling the beat of Steve’s heart against his own—a thud-thud-thud that proves to him that he’s _real_ , that this hasn’t been a dream, that he hasn’t spent years yearning for someone who’s never been there.

Bucky doesn’t realize he’s let out a dry sob until Steve’s hand brushes his face, his thumb pressed to Bucky’s jaw, his palm cupping Bucky’s face, and when Steve looks into his eyes, concern knit between his brows, Bucky feels it slot into place—all of it, every piece of himself, all of the parts of him that have been hurting for so long.

“What’s wrong?” Steve asks, gently. “My sweetheart.” He brushes his mouth against Bucky’s own and Bucky nearly keens against it, out here, out loud, in public, and Steve presses another kiss to the space under Bucky’s lips and murmurs, “My Bucky.”

Bucky shakes his head and Steve pulls him closer, holds him against his chest, firm and unyielding, until Bucky stops thrashing, until he stops clawing at him, trying to draw him to him, trying to punish him for leaving him, and trying to keep him from doing it again.

“I’m sorry,” Steve murmurs into Bucky’s hair over and over again, _I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry_ , a litany that Bucky needs to hear, until Bucky stops fighting and holds onto Steve, his fingers curled into Steve’s shirt, his hands pressed against his chest, Bucky held closely there.

“I can’t do this without you,” Bucky says and he doesn’t know what he means—this time, or this place, or this life—but he knows he means it. He knows it as sure as he knows his name, or the color of the Brooklyn sky when the sun is dipping behind the buildings across the water, or the face of his niece when she falls asleep, cradled in his arms, holding onto his thumb the way she used to when she was just born.

He doesn’t let go of Steve, catches the blue of his eyes and makes him listen.

“Stay, or take me with you. I don’t care which one it is.”

Steve sucks in a shaky breath, but holds steady. His eyes bore into Bucky’s, reading the secrets he has left to him, laying him bare in the middle of this Brooklyn street, the heat pressed against them, the fireflies out, just like another night, lifetimes ago.

“You don’t know what you’re asking,” Steve says, quietly. “I’m not from here.”

“I don’t care,” Bucky says.

“I’m not from _now_ ,” Steve tries again.

“I don’t _care_ ,” Bucky says again. This time it’s his palm on Steve’s face, his thumb catching Steve’s lower lip as he inhales shakily.

“It’s selfish enough,” Steve says, “for me to come back for you. To keep appearing to you like this, time and time again, offering nothing. Haven’t I ruined your life enough, Buck?”

Bucky pries Steve’s lower lip down and smiles.

“No,” he says. And then, “Steve.”

Steve laughs, but it’s a sad, low thing, a puff of breath that’s more exhalation than anything else, a sound forced from his chest. It sounds like acceptance or resignation and it thrills Bucky to hear.

“I know what I’m asking,” Bucky says, softly. “I’ve been alive for thirty-three years. And I’ve only been happy three days in my life.”

Steve looks sad at that, just hopelessly, interminably sad.

“You know me,” Bucky says, searching Steve’s eyes. He can’t see a lie there; maybe Steve isn’t capable of it, maybe he doesn’t know how to, not to Bucky. Steve nods. “I know you too. How do I know you?”

“I’m Steve and you’re Bucky,” Steve says. “I would know any iteration of you, in any timeline, in any universe.”

Bucky can’t lie either. He doesn’t know why this is true, but he knows that it is.

He twines their fingers together, watches Steve watch him as he brings their hands to his mouth and kisses them.

“Take me with you,” Bucky says. “Wherever you go. Take me there.”

“Really?” Steve asks and this time he’s the soft one, the one who seems splintered, cracks in glass so thin, a breath would make it shatter. His eyes widen, his expression almost child-like, open wide in surprise, as though he can’t quite believe what he’s hearing, or as though Bucky is the one thing he never thought he could never ask for.

Bucky smiles and leans forward, framing Steve’s face with his hands, one still twined with Steve’s, and kisses him.

When Bucky pulls away, Steve’s expression is soft, his sky blue eyes dazed.

“Wherever you go,” Bucky says. “Whenever you go. Take me with you.”

Steve tilts his forehead onto Bucky’s and closes his eyes.

* * *

**2020\. (34 years)**

It’s the heat that sticks to the back of his neck, the air so humid it crawls over his skin, coating him, a thick blanket of moisture that has his forehead slick and his curls matted to his temples.

Around him, the sounds of the park—voices drifting from benches, laughter sparking near knees pulled up on grass, blankets on the ground, fingers tangled together between bodies that share a space, a life. There’s a light breeze that rustles through the trees, bright green, thick with leaves. The fountain is on, the sound of water gently splashing behind him.

In front, Steve, framed by an arch.

Bucky sucks in a breath and the violins begin again.

He turns to look at them and Steve, also red-faced, sweaty from the heat, grins.

“They’re here every summer,” he says.

“You can just sit here and listen to them?” Bucky asks, questioningly.

There are four rows of them, playing violins and flutes and cellos and other instruments he couldn’t name.

“If you want,” Steve says.

There’s more than that. There are people playing games, people sitting by the fountain, people sharing ice cream cones on benches that are filled around every corner. There are children and parents, friends and siblings; there are lovers.

Two men kiss sweetly by the fountain—just lean in and press their mouths together.

It’s New York City in the summer; the best of the city, a city in love with itself.

Bucky sucks in a breath, startled, and turns back to Steve.

There’s a firefly lighting up on his shoulder. His eyes, glowing in the evening’s soft light, watch Bucky openly. Bucky feels it in the center of his chest, a feeling so fragile it’s nearly foreign. It spreads through him, fizzy and heady, making a gauzy night feel softer, pastel colors pressed to his skin, the trees painted in watercolors.

Steve’s mouth curves into a smile.

He offers a hand.

Bucky traces the shape of him, the truth of this person he knows; of the man he’s allowed to love.

Slowly, his shoulders go down. They untuck from near his ears.

He smiles and lets out a long, slow breath.

Bucky takes Steve’s hand and Steve pulls him close.

He tucks his face into Steve’s neck and they dance under the dark summer sky, the music winding around them.

Around them, night slowly falls.

Behind them, a street light flickers on.

*

_darling come the time when you slip away  
i'll be that whispered word that hangs around your doorway  
our tale complete  
we'll still dance like strangers in the street_  
  
 **[Strangers in the Street](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjsMph8qDQ8) // The Fratellis**

**Author's Note:**

> I would offer an explanation of how this works between IW and EG and time travel and Bucky being snapped and which Bucky is this, given the timeline and background are the same, etc. but I won't. I don't have an explanation! This is Nomad Steve, time traveling back to find Bucky and love him and bring him back with him and whether that comports with canon isn't something I care about. True love is the answer to everything! Canon divergence! Thank you for reading! ♥
> 
> \+ This fic can be RTed [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/spacerenegades/status/1276587267667230720?s=20) or reblogged [on Tumblr](https://spacerenegades.tumblr.com/post/622018144564871168/nomad-steve-1940s-bucky-15k-rated), if you'd like to share! Thank you! ♥

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[PODFIC] Strangers in the Street](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25898233) by [lightupstars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lightupstars/pseuds/lightupstars)




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